eltonyo, waay back in 2005, needs to get a little bit more microbial knowledge. Yes antibiotics shouldn't come near your kitchen. Bleach is not an antibiotic (like penicillin), it is antibacterial. Hot soap and water is about the best thing for cleaning anywhere in your house and kitchen. Yes, bacteria are everywhere, but they are not all benign in our human bodies - while I am quite happy to eat a nice big bowl of yoghurt (seething with bacteria), you won't find me licking out a potty or munching on raw chicken (which is probably pumped full of unnecessary antibiotics as well as a nice dose of resistant bacteria). Anyway, good luck to you onyo, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, eh?

I have a beautiful old chopping block from a Chinatown meat market. It has been moved from place to place with me but never used, as I never knew how to get it disinfected. (Not sure what would have been harder on it germ-wise-----all the Peking ducks, etc., chopped on it, or all the dirty moving trucks and basements I've relegated it to.) Anyway, I am ready to set it up and need someone to summarize for me precisely what I should do to initially clean it and then maintain it. It is about 15 inches deep and about a yard long on each side----a real beaut! When we got it, we had part of the top removed but retained a slight "bowl" in the center, to maintain a little bit of history. There are a million cuts in that section, and part of the whole block has a crack in it (like, 8 inches deep from top to bottom). I am a "germ-o-phobe" and would love to use this precious piece of our Chinatown's history without worrying about what's lurking in the cracks.

So glad I found this site, and thank you all for your expertise.

Oh----I do have one more question----do products like "OxyClean" sanitize laundry and/or surfaces cleaned with it?

Hands down, my favourite cutting board is the Epicurean, which is lightweight, doesn't get deep grooves from the cutting, doesn't dull knives, and can be put in the dishwasher.

I work in management for Crate and Barrel and recently we were visited by our friendly Wusthof knife representative. He stated that Wusthof (a leading cutlery manufacturer since 1814) does not recommend using Epicurean cutting boards. He stated that if the wood composite is so strong as to not be damaged/grooved by your cutlery (as most epicurian manufacturers claim) then your knives are being damaged instead. Yes, you want a strong surface to cut upon, but don't get anything so hard that it damages your knife blades.

Interesting link that of GaryProtein (http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents/Cutboard.html).
This is suposed to be a place to scientifically discuss all the weird science of cooking. I'd love to see any scientific references to the suposed "repulsion" of bacteria of wooden chopping boards as I'm quite surprised with that assertion.

I've been in several cooking courses and we always use polyethylene boards. Wood is forbidden by sanitary laws here in Spain and restaurants have to use a color coded polyethylene table for each type of food. Now, I don't know if polyethylene is the same as what you generally call 'plastic'...

Anyhow I'm confused. According to the mentioned study, a simple water wash of a wooden surface gets rid of 98.5% of bacteria whereas with plastic it's only 75.3% (things change when you use vinager though). That kind of brings back the question about what is actually called 'plastic' in terms of composition.

If I can't oil my cutting boards with mineral oil, does anyone have any other suggestions ? Eg peanut oil, coconut oil, sesame oil or any other ?

Does anyone actually have any experience of oiling with cooking oil and having it go rancid ? I thought that in theory oil can only go rancid when it is heated to past a certain temperature (different for different oils) and the molecules start to break down. I assume in practice no one actually heats the cutting board so this should not be an issue - or is my science all wrong ?

If I can't oil my cutting boards with mineral oil, does anyone have any other suggestions ? Eg peanut oil, coconut oil, sesame oil or any other ?

Does anyone actually have any experience of oiling with cooking oil and having it go rancid ? I thought that in theory oil can only go rancid when it is heated to past a certain temperature (different for different oils) and the molecules start to break down. I assume in practice no one actually heats the cutting board so this should not be an issue - or is my science all wrong ?

First, why can't you use mineral oil on your cutting boards??????????

Second, you can ONLY use mineral oil on cutting boards. Vegetable oils of any type will go rancid and smell, regardless of the temperature. Go to a pharmacy and get food grade/laxative mineral oil/intestinal lubricant, yes its all the same, and go to town oiling the board. Starting with a clean dry board, pour about one ounce on a 16x20" board and allow it to stand overnight, then wipe and allow the rest to naturally soak in. After that, with normal use, about one tablespoon spread out the same way once a week will keep your board in fine shape. Normal washing removes the oils, so weekly applications are necessary.

I have several cutting boards. I have some plastic sheet type... a blue one for poultry, a red one for meat, and two white ones for veg/general items. I have a small plastic one for breads, and a glass one for cooked meats. I find the glass one works best for hot foods as it tolerates the heat best.

I have worked in the food industry over the years in delis, restaurants and cafes. I have seen the mistakes that people make when it comes to contamination both in the home and in restaurant environments. The biggest threat there is for contamination on cutting boards comes from gross negligence. If it were the case that a person cleaned a cutting board with heat, soap and water and a few bacteria were left the chance of making someone sick would be very low. The vast majority of food born illness from cutting boards is because the person doesn't know proper cleaning procedure . One of the reasons I hate glass cutting boards is that I see people buy them because they think they are easier to clean and then they get lazy. I watch as they take their miracle wiping rag and wipe the surface of the glass and then claim that it is clean. The excuse they use is " It's a clean rag therefore it must be making the surface clean. I have even seen people cut raw chicken and other meats then wipe the glass and then cut raw vegetables for a salad, guess who's getting salmonella tonight. Even in the case of wood where people make the claim the wood kills bacteria the claim is completely useless because it is just not possible to have a test for bacteria every time it is used therefore you don't really know if it has killed the bacteria. Also the other mistake people make is thinking they have cleaned a surface with soap and water but they get stingy with the soap. To truly clean a surface all of the oils, fats etc have to be broken down and removed. Traces of oil left on a surface can act as protection for bacteria. In all of my research I have found that acetal plastic also known as delrin is the best for cutting boards. It is hard, can be resurfaced when needed and has very low absorbtion of liquids compared to wood and nylon. Also the claims that hard plastics dull knives is not true. Look up the hardness of knife steels and then the hardness of hard plastics like delrin, they aren't even in the same ballpark.

The board shattered into myriad pieces with a sound she described as "like someone threw a big stone through the window."

Can anyone tell me why such a thing could happen?

Tesla would enjoy offering a hypothesis. Since he is not here, I'll stand in for him. It could be that vibration was set up during the washing (rubbing could do this) that was at the natural frequency or one of the modes of the board (see the MATLAB logo) and micro-scratches that have accumulated over time finally gave way. Time to pitch the other board, it may suffer the same fate. Delrin, see a prior post in this thread, is the way to go.

I own a knife manufacturing business. Cutting on very hard surfaces: granite, most of all, but also glass and corian takes the edge off of your knives almost immediately. They can also cause the edge to chip very easily. It's like buying a car and then deciding you can run it without oil. Just don't go there.

I grew up in a house with *one* chopping block. It was a little better than two feet square, and stood on legs in the middle of our kitchen.

My parents, and later I, cut everything that needed to be cut on that block, from mushrooms to mackeral. We mixed, rolled out dough, performed minor surgery, and in one particularly acrobatic move, my mother escaped an evil looking little snake by leaping on top of it. And I never remember any of us getting sick from anything we ate. The block is still there, and still in use by my father every day.

My wife and I have talked about getting an old butcher block for our kitchen, and I have recently come into possesion of a slightly larger model than the one I grew up with [30 inches wide by five feet long by 15 inches thick... love at first sight] that I plan on moving into the house Christmas Eve after my wife goes to sleep. The problem is that she used to work in a hospital, and has been trained that plastic and bleach is the only way to go.

I'm hoping that this page might help me to convince her to let me actually use this thing like it was meant to be used!